Stop shouting. Our purpose here is not to defend the schmoozing with big business, the crushed liberties, still less the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. Nor for that matter are we concerned with the record NHS funding and the three election victories to which the former prime minister's admirers point with justified pride. There are already too many whole books dedicated to pushing one view or another of the Blair record. What gets less attention is the curious and enduring fascination of Blair the character – whether in real life, fiction or film. Michael Sheen's Tony Blair in The Queen (one of his three turns in the role) was the making of that blockbuster, and – like it or loathe it – the real man's A Journey is a page-turning read in a way that few memoirs are. Its draw is less the events described, seismic as they are, but the hope of making sense of the chatty, charming and enraging chameleon that we all came to know so well, without ever quite understanding. Now the 80s Comic Strip team is reassembling to bring you The Hunt for Tony Blair, which shows on Channel 4 tonight. One of their number, Nigel Planer, who plays Peter Mandelson, told the BBC that Blair was Shakespearean in the Henry V sense that "huge stories can be hung on him". One ripping yarn wrapped around him was Robert Harris's The Ghost, a pacey thriller in which all manner of twists reveal the many mysteries of power. The greatest of the lot is exposed only at the end: namely, what it is that makes Tony tick.